Half Alive
by Naughty Captain Crieff
Summary: How Tony Stark does not become infatuated with a god. How a god does not make him less than human. But then again, Tony has always been adept at lying to himself. Eventual M.
1. Your Price to Pay

**A/N: ****I hate second person so much. I mean, it reads well but it is a bitch to write. I wasn't intending on making this story this long, you see. But now it is and I am trapped in "you". I hope you enjoy it all the same. Disclaimer: I don't own none of this. Nothin'**

Half Alive

Chapter 1: Your Price to Pay

At first you call it narcissism.

Instead of infatuation (which is what it is).

Narcissism because he's just like you really, in wit and arrogance and foolish bravery (and "Oh daddy, why won't you love me?" but you try not to think about that similarity). Or what you would be if you were one card short of a deck. And if he is just like you, or at least the gnarled reflection of you in a shattered mirror, then your interest (infatuation) with him is really just conceit (or so you tell yourself).

Narcissism because he feeds your ego when he licks sharp words at you from that silver tongue in the heat of battle in the heart of an inferno. Because above all others he stops tearing down the world to face _you_ (and isn't it funny that, until now, you never stopped to ask yourself why?).

It began, you suppose (you don't _suppose anything_- you _know_), two months (and one week and three days) ago whilst hidden away in the seam of a city ravaged by a god's wrath. You were trying to repair your suit, trying to breathe through the fading light of your azure heart.

And then there he was. And then there you both were. Alone.

* * *

Loki wears the ashes of the dead across his face as his war paint. He looks like (no- he _is_) a prince in the snow (it looks like snow, this burning city raining down on your head and you want to print an angel on the ground because you've always appreciated irony) of his carnage and he stands above you (statuesque without trying) and casts you in his darkness. Beneath him, you feel like a little boy wrapped in tin foil, pretending to be the hero. Playing hero.

Man of Iron, Loki calls you. The lilt of his voice when he says it rings like a threat wrapped in a caress (like the words might curl themselves around your throat and squeeze the life from you). It is danger and curiosity (and later it will become temptation but not now. That would be mad. You'd be mad. You will be-).

Your names for him are nothing so flattering (but then again your voice is not the tenor shudder of a cello as his is).

Your suit is your gilded cage, folded around you and into you like it shouldn't be and you no longer remember how it came to be that way; it doesn't matter. What matters is that you are trapped and all of your bells and whistles (and God knows you have enough of them) can't help you now.

At his mercy.

When Loki grins at you, his mouth like a knife's edge, you are sure- _sure_ that this is your end. And he drops to his knees, comes down to your level (and all you can think is what an odd way this is for Loki to kill someone- Loki, the _god_, who tells you all how beneath him you are at every given chance) and places his weapon at his side. You want to put your acrid tongue to good use, to bite something witty at him about not getting his hands dirty but you can't even breathe with your suit jarring the arc reactor as it is.

He starts with your helmet. Pulls it from your head and sets it aside and it takes you a few heartbeats, a few staggered, painful breaths to understand what he is doing. He is stripping you of your armour. Sure fingers finding clasps and catches where they can and pulling the armour of your chest plate loose and unskilled fingers snapping off hinges where they cannot find an entrance and tearing the armour of your chest plate apart. And of all the awful things Loki has done to you and has threatened to do to you, this is the worst. Because you do not possess awesome strength, you cannot fight in close combat; you cannot even shoot an arrow. Beneath your suit, you are human.

The most human of the Avengers.

And Loki knows.

"This is cruel," you manage to gasp, "even for you."

This stops him, just briefly, and he catches your eye (and you had wanted him to see the face of the man he was about to murder, you really did, until he actually looked). It startles you just how real he appears from this close, lines of age and weariness worn into skin that seems so flawless from a distance. Lines that look more like battles scars, tell more of his past to you than any flesh wound could. He seems to register the look in your eye (fear and indignation and defiance all in one; because you'd be a fool not to be scared and you're a fool so you're still obstinate) and something flickers across his features, something akin to disappointment, before all traces of ever being anything other than the villain melt away into a porcelain mask. You have never wanted to shatter it more.

"For me, nothing is cruel." He returns, voice unwavering, monotonous but somehow dripping in, drowning in judgement. (_You think me a monster, do you not? How can anything be too cruel to a monster? You almost hear him hiss. But you don't because he wouldn't. Doesn't._).

You have to wonder if Loki can feel your heart through your chest as he pushes your shirt up, jade eyes glinting in cerulean light (_blue_ is too gaudy a colour to describe anything regarding this God, this monster, this half-creature), because you can sure as hell feel it. This desperate thing in your chest trying to break through your ribs.

Now would be a just a _great_ time to talk. You can't fight; you can't move so you can't fight (and if you could, do you really imagine you could escape him without your technology anyway, when you are nothing more than _human_?). So _talk_. Talk your way out; is this not what you do every day? Rolling words from your tongue and wielding them like weapons.

No. No it is not. When you speak it is clever and it is wicked but you know that it is nothing- nothing to him. Words are his craft, his artistry and next to him (_Silvertongue_) you are an infant, gurgling.

So, to be frank, it is hopeless.

You're going to die, you decide (like you have a choice in the matter). How anticlimactic.

Loki's fingers are _in_ your chest, at your core (and one day he will be there again, but it will be so much better and so much worse).

And then-

And then you can breathe again (_ isn't this somewhat counterproductive, Loki?_ You think, because destructive defence mechanisms don't stop just because your heart almost did.). You wait a heartbeat, two, three, but he isn't killing you. Instead he is standing, moving away.

And you need to speak- say something to him, _anything_ but all you can choke out is a half-hearted disgruntled, "How d'you know how to do that?"

"It is of use to me to understand how to... disassemble you, if I so require. Fortuitously, the same laws apply in reverse."

"Not that I'm complaining or anything, oh merciful ruler, " and haven't you always pushed it just too far, "but do you mind telling me why I'm not dead?"

Loki cocks an eyebrow (Loki cocks his eyebrow the way a soldier cocks a gun. The cliché _if looks could kill_ has never been more applicable), "That is for me to know, Stark."

And he is gone, vanished on a haze of golden light. Leaving you half alive.

* * *

Loki saved your life.

This you could not forget. Could not forgive (forgive yourself for).

You were in his debt.

Debt (:_something that is owed_ (a life, a life, a life) _or that one is bound to pay to another_).

You rolled the word back and forth on your tongue for hours (and hours and hours). It tasted bitter, poisonous.

It became a chorus, that word, a cacophony of ceaseless, monotonous noise in your head. Debt. This debt you owed. This debt you could possibly hope to repay. Because there was nothing you could give him that was worth your life. (Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt have no other gods- _have no other gods_, how many times have you broken that commandment now?).

You wished to be done with it, to be out of the binds you had convinced yourself he had on you but Loki seemed to blink out of existence after the day he (you can't say it, can't admit it again)-

Normally, you would be thankful of the respite from your chaotic God problem but now every day he was not there to fight, every day you could not face him, Loki's binds drew themselves tighter around you (_suffocating_) with that insufferable debt but even more than that the why.

(_Why save me? Why spare me? Why, why, why, why?_)

So, you made Loki force his hand the next time he was in town, the next time he was tearing up the Earth with a savage grin and with savage words (that grin, those words, they could strip you bare in a moment, you knew. You still know how vulnerable he makes you and still you allow it). You let him work you into a corner, let him think that he was pulling the strings because you knew that is what would coerce _you_. This tangible (corrupting, consuming) power held over someone else so wholly. It is different for you than it is for him- of course, of course it is. Your influence is your defence and your amenity. Loki's is his offence and his weapon - but the principles are the same regardless and soon enough you found yourself on a peer at the edge of that island you protected. Trapped-

Trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea.

A familiar smirk played across his lips (_sharp, sharp. It could cut you. It_ will _cut you one day_) and he stood above (always above) you, balancing his spear on his finger. Pivoted at the centre and teetering from side to side to side to side, a set of scales. Your life in the balance. It was as if Loki weighed the cons of allowing you to live on (one more Avenger: to foil his plans, to beat him up, to mock him, to detest him) against the pros of saving your life (ah). The scales did not tip in your favour, then why, why, why, why-

"_Why_?" You barked at him from across the peer and if it was possible his smile got wider (slicing his face open).

The air grew stagnant between you without any response so you pushed, "Why did you save me?"

"Why didn't you kill me? Or let me die? Or..."

"What do you want from me?"

Still Loki said nothing, opting instead to let a tongue dart out to wet his lips (and you tell yourself afterwards that your eyes did not linger on, fixate on the subtle bow).

"Sorry, am I not speaking Shakespearian enough for you?" You jested because that was your safest line of defence and you were scared, scared of what he might ask for the life he saved and spared. Extending your hand mockingly before you, you gave a hearty stage cough and proclaimed in your best "Thor", "What price asketh you for my damned soul?"

"I want to take you apart."

Speechless is not a term you were well associated with, but you learnt it well enough that day. In that moment, trapped between one heart beat and the next. Frozen in the sharp shock of fear and confusion you learnt what it was to be without a voice (he stole it from you. He'll steal it again yet).

Loki shed his smile (as a snake sheds his skin) and he didn't look amused any longer. He was serious and solemn and cold and-

Gone. Disappeared again before you could ask what and when and god dammit _why_.

But that was your price. Even if you did not understand what exactly he wanted, that was the price for your soul.

_I want to take you apart._

This is your price to pay.

**A/N: ****I have no idea when the next chapter will be up. I am in the midst of my A Levels at the moment so a bit busy. But I will try my best. Reviews will certainly help the process (that is assuming it is any good and people wish for it to continue at least).**


	2. Six Words to Madness

**N/A: Oh the introspection! This is somewhat lacking in Tony and Loki communication and heavy on the Tony-is-trying-to-figure-things-out-also-he-hates-himself stuff. But, ummm, I hope you like it!**

**And I have tumblr (mainly Loki orientated at this time) if you wish to follow me for any reason: king-mycroft**

* * *

Six words to madness.

_I want to take you apart._

Those words become your mantra (your madness). Days on end spent repeating repeating them. To decipher their code. To pay your debt.

Debt is not something you are comfortable with. Not something you willingly place yourself in and something you strive to be out of. It is a price on your head, something to be held over you, the loss of power, of self-possession (one day- one day you will relinquish it all, you'll lose it all. To him. To Him.)

You owe this Earth a debt and you pay it back by dressing up in faux-iron and avenging those you were too late to save. You owe Pepper Pots a debt and you pay it back with money and empty affection. You owe a god a debt and you shall pay it back.

But how do you pay back what you do not understand? What could be nothing and everything?

He will not tell you- Loki will not free you from this prison you have built around yourself (walls carved from six words, six words). He says instead, he tells you-

"You must decide what it means, Stark." There is no animosity there, when he speaks to you (despite the fact that he is sporting a pretty black eye that one of your friends have just gifted him), just a monotone- a single, unwavering note to his voice like the flat line of heart monitor (this type of Loki is the one that scares you the most. Loki without insanity or wrath. Loki honest and lucid. Loki, sharp as a knife.)

"And what if I decide that they mean nothing? That I don't have to give you a damn thing?"

"Then you don't give me a _damn_ thing." He returns simply, mimicking your garish words and somehow making them roll from his tongue with finesse.

And that is all he says- that or some variation thereof- every time you confront him over days and weeks. That is all he says but you can still hear the unspoken threat (_I am a god and I may take what I have given_.) in the delicate intonation of his voice.

You think you hear him, sometimes.

_Do not allow me to take you apart , give me nothing in return. If that is what you think your soul is worth._

So this is a question of your self-worth.

You have desperately underestimated him- his insidiousness. His ability to see beneath the surface of you, to peel back the layers and see what you really are, beneath iron and arc and skin and bone.

Loki has posed you with one question, and in the answer to that question you may find the payment to your debt. But only then. One question, just one-

What is your life worth to you?

(Nothing and everything.)

In your own eyes, you are worth little. Your past decorated with the blood of a million, however inadvertently. Your body worn from a decade- or two or three- of learning every moral code just to see how easily you could break them.

But, ah, a conflict.

To the Earth, you are indispensable. Iron Man, Avenger, saviour, defender, _hero_. Your life is not your own, not really. Because you alive means hundreds, thousands saved. And, for once, you don't appreciate the irony; that by saving your life, Loki has saved the world he wishes to see burn.

_I want to take you apart_

In the end, after days and weeks of repetition repetition you think you know what he wants, what you should give him. Because if he is your mirror (and your foil) then you only have to know how the words taste on your own tongue to understand their meaning. And, to you, they taste of desire.

And so you finally have your price.

Yourself.

But first; a test.

You don't have to wait long for him- soon enough Loki is back to dancing (and doesn't he dance just magnificently; better than you, better than your Avengers. How has he not conquered you yet? Unless that has never been his intention- unless-) with an arsenal of magic and a shiny new army flanking him.

You trick him into another corner (though you're beginning to doubt that you have ever tricked him once thus far, and he hasn't just been letting you think you have control) so you might enact your plan.

A test.

A kiss.

You lurch forward, helmet opening as you go, into him and onto him like a marionette pulled by a thousand strings (you're on his strings, don't you see? Can you not feel the thread beneath your skin? Of course not.)

He doesn't taste as you had imagined (so you've imagined this then? _Yes, yes, so much, too much_.). Not cold or caustic.

Loki tastes honey sweet and his lips are warm, embers on your skin. (_Sin_, you tell yourself, _this is what sin tastes like._). Frenzied as you are with the exact palate (and shape and texture and-) of his mouth, it takes you a moment (too long a moment. This is what he does to you, makes you duller than you ought to be) to register that he is not kissing you back.

You cease the frantic press of lips, but keep yourself against him so that you might stare into unblinking eyes, emerald alight with mirth. The colour- the colour_ should_ remind you of something wrong, something bitter like envy (and wouldn't that just be fitting for this green-ey'd monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on) or horrific like Soylent Green. But it doesn't. Instead it reminds you of the tree you fell out of when you were seven when you thought that you had discovered the equation that would make man fly (and your father, afterwards, brushing calloused thumbs across your cheeks to wipe away salt water) or the twenty dollar bill you stole from James Lewis when you were sixteen (and the way he chased you down the hall to retrieve it, pinning you to the wall and- he wasn't as sweet Loki is now).

Loki does not push you away but neither does he draw you closer- he is stood neither ridged nor relaxed. As if he is appeasing a child's whims more than anything. This thought makes you step back- step away (with not little effort on your part. He is _magnetic_, drawing you closer- closer).

"I thought this is what you wanted?" You say, though there is nothing insecure in your tone (you'd be a poor playboy indeed if you let something as small as rejection trip you), in fact you stick your tongue between your teeth and _grin_, gesturing to your body as you do.

Loki seems unfazed, if slightly amused, and quips in return, "It is what you believe I want."

A frown creases your brow and Loki licks his lips (as if trying to taste you again) and you want to step back towards him, want to step closer but you can't. Can't with this sudden repelling force between you, as if you're the same pole of a magnet as he is now and the similarities between you are forcing you apart.

"Is it possible for you to give a straight answer? Or does everything have to be poetic nonsense?"

"I _am_ known as liesmith."

"Do you want me?"

"I'd have you, if you offered. But that does necessarily mean it repays your debt."

"Then what will?"

"Now, Stark, I am sure we've been over this."

"Why won't you just tell me?"

"Where would be the mischief in that?"

Somewhere between the lines of your exchange Loki overcomes the force between you, steps forward and leaves not an inch between iron and armour. And upon his last line a smirk plays across the bow of his lips and he raises a hand. He brushes his fingertips over the curve of your jaw, you lean closer- closer into his touch (on his strings) and feel a wave of rage- of self-loathing- crash down upon you so fiercely that before you even know what you've done, you've thrown Loki across the room with a crackling blast of energy from your palm.

You don't think you have ever felt this blindly reckless- helpless before. No coat of arrogance to protect you now, just this raw, honest mentality within (you think- some part of you thinks _he's already taking me a part_, but you ignore yourself).

Loki emerges from the wreckage with jarring laughter on his tongue and with smoke rolling from his shoulders like the spirit of a soul he once possessed.

"You silly, little boy." He snarls at you and for a moment your priorities are fucked. Because instead of preparing to fight you stand and wonder how old he must be to consider _you_ a boy- centuries at least (he'll tell you one day just how old he is, he will whisper to you of the millennia he has been half living and you will fall silent under the poisonous lullaby of his ancient voice).

His face is more like the one you recognise for a second, deranged, unstable, volcanic. But it is gone again, too soon. This is where you differ, you suppose, in the command Loki holds over his emotions- an area in which you clearly lack (at least your emotions are so much less… explosive than his. There is that.)

"When you are ready to barter for your soul and not act like a hormone addled barn, just call out for me." Loki hums, hands brushing across leather to rid himself of debris, as if being thrown into a wall was nothing more than a minor inconvenience. He is unharmed but for a single piece of glass jutting from his cheek (you're not sure if you want to pull it out of him, or push it further in).

"Call for you?" You repeat numbly, tongue like lead in your mouth (you want to run it along his skin and see if it tastes the same as his lips. All in the name of science of course. To discover this fascinating creature that manipulates you so easily. No one does that.)

"Just call." He repeats and adds with a smirk, "A bark, a whisper, a moan."

He's gone before the second blast can hit him.

Hours pass. And they become days which become weeks which becomes too long without seeing him but still no Spector, with his skeletal hand wrapped around a scythe, comes to lay claim to the life that should no longer be yours.

Weeks pass in a dull monotony (but with a sharp awareness of every second tick, tick, ticking by) where you try not to think about that thing you owe and to whom you owe it.

You don't sleep much anymore.

You don't sleep much anymore and you tell yourself that it is the Avengers and the Earth's habit of relapsing into fire and brimstone every time you close your eyes that keeps you awake.

But you're a liar.

Because when you do finally succumb to sleep you dream in sharp bursts of colour, of every shade of green that his eyes are trapped between and of harsh but harmonious laughter peeling from a throat so pale it is almost translucent. And when you wake you do so with a god's name pressed between the crease of your lips (a prayer).

It is during one of these nights- some place between witching hour and cockcrow- where sleep evades you, the bliss of unconsciousness slipping from between your fingers, that you make your choice (the worst one of your life?).

Because you have finally realised, an epiphany in the dead of night, that the desire you heard on his voice all those weeks ago was not just lust (you're not even sure if he understands such a tawdry concept, being what he is). Nor was it a desire to destroy or conquer. But rather the desire to own.

To possess.

You've made your choice.

"Loki?" You call into the darkness.

* * *

**N/A: I am still doing my exams so the next chapter will be a fair while away (I wasn't planning on finishing this one until next Friday actually, so it's not all bad).**

**Also, I know it might seem otherwise, but I have literally no idea where the plot is going, yay! So if you have any ideas... bearing in mind that this is _not a happy story_.**

**- Ella**


	3. Samson

**A/N: I am so sorry this took so long. I have no excuse (that's a lie, I do, lots of them, but I shan't inflict them upon you).**

**There is sex in this chapter (I am sure some of you will be relieved) but it is non- explicit because- as a reviewer (NyteKit) so wonderfully pointed out- the sensuality of this story lies, I hope anyway, in the way it is written and not the actual sexual side of these two (as sexy as they are).**

**You can probably guess this but the_ chunks of italicised text_ are flashback type things.**

* * *

**Samson**

Fury is talking, you realise numbly.

Fury has been talking for some time, in fact (talking at you rather than to you of course). At you and your merry band of misfits, that is. All of you dressed in shiny battle armour and ready for a patrol of the city. To be a weekly thing, Fury says, ensuring citizens of their safety, Fury rambles, making them believe in their heroes and something something something, Fury drones.

You're not listening. Well, of course you're not, you never do. But for once you're not thinking about the bottle of Talisker waiting behind the bar in Stark Tower or of that marvellous thing the one who calls herself Honey can do with her tongue.

You're thinking of Him (it will only get worse, his residence in your mind. One day he'll occupy every corner.)

Thinking of the demanding press of his fingertips into yielding flesh and the bruises he left. Of his tongue licking a path of fire up the curve of your spine and the teeth marks on your shoulder. And hoping no one can see- can see this claim he made on you with fingers and tongue and teeth (you are mine, they _scream_ from beneath your metal and beneath your clothes.)

But more; there is more than that on your mind (come now, don't lie to yourself). Not just the physical evidence so loud on your skin but the vivid, colourful memories of the night before playing on a loop, like a broken tape recorder. And you can't wipe the damn tape (you don't want to).

_Loki raises his eyebrows a little at the Ironman suit when at first he appears in your bedroom, "If I knew this was to be an ambush I mightn't have come so readily."_

_Honestly you had only put the damn thing on in a fit of panic (**why did I do that, why, why, why**, you asked yourself after you had called his name into the night; too late), but there is no time to regret it now, debts to pay. Instead you grin at him, all sharp teeth and wiggling brows, and laugh (none too nervously), "It's not, I just thought you wanted to take me apart?"_

_You're a fool. A fool to present yourself to him like this, at your most powerful, when you know it is his intention (and your own, don't forget you are allowing this) to strip that power away. You're a fool for telling him, with the stubborn defiance in the clench of your fists and the scarcely masked fear behind your eyes, your greatest weakness_ (you're human, oh so human beneath that armour. But let him tear it all away, won't you. Tempt it away. Cut it away. Cut it off. Your Delilah.)

_He moves closer- closer, so you imagine you can feel the impossible heat rolling from his skin and through your suit, and smirks, "That I do."_

"Alright team, let's roll out!" Steve commands with far too much enthusiasm for so early in the day but you don't comment.

Together, you file out, Bruce with his shoulders hunched up to his neck, Barton with his back straight and lips thin, drawn tight like he is actually a damn bow, Tash with her eyes forever darting from side to side like she doesn't trust the ground she walks on and Thor with that perpetual cheer on his horribly loveable face (that cheer that only ever falters where a brother is concerned). You have to wonder how they're still going on, how normality remains, how the world is even turning on after last night.

_Loki strips you languidly, relishes in each layer peeled from your skin as you stand shivering in the glare of the ashen moon. A cruel smile curls his lip when jade eyes (greedy, hungry. Like he's going to devour you. It wouldn't surprise you.) rake over the exposed expanse of your flesh. Loki laughs when you mutter something about him being too clothed; a cloying sound, all gentle and mocking. But he allows you to undress him (you regret it). He's built up of hard lines and smooth, ivory skin and your body reacts predictably to the sight (he's beautiful. There's poetry written in the angles of his body and you want to read- to taste every inch it)._

"What the fuck are you doing Stark?" Barton's bark rings in your ear and it take you a few moments of blinking to realise you'd just banked left and clipped the wing of the jet that the rest of your team are sitting in.

"Sorry." You mutter your apology as JARVIS rattles off your altitude and the wind speed as if that will help your shoddy flying (nothing can help you now. Not just with your flying. You're unredeemable).

You land alongside the jet in the centre of town, surrounded by a flock of swooning fans with their saccharine smiles and grabbing hands. You feel ill.

You know you don't deserve this.

_Licking and biting, he fought his way into your mouth (you like to think you fought back valiantly, but you surrendered too soon). Tongue across teeth, taking, tasting. You detest how seamlessly your bodies fit together when he presses against you; thigh to chest._

You and the rest of Fury's not-so-super-secret boy band traipse through the streets with a gaggle of adoring fans at your heels. The ground beneath your feet is damp and petrichor sticks thickly in your nostrils. It had rained last night, an incessant deluge. Accompanied by monstrous cracks of thunder. Viscous flares of electricity.

Fitting weather, you thought, fucking pathetic fallacy.

You mumble under your breath and cross your arms across your chest petulantly. Bruce must feel something is wrong because he lingers around you like a bad smell with a look of concern playing over his world- weary features.

Awkwardly, he pats the back of your suit in a manner that suggests he's probably never had a friend to comfort before (you realise that the thought should make your heart clench for the man, but it doesn't. And what might that say about you?).

When _Bruce Banner_ thinks you're wound too tight (and you are, too tight. Stretched too thin. Ready to _snap_) then you really should be worried.

_Turning you over, so gently (too gently. His hands are too soft. You think that all that blood he gets on them must have something to do with it and the thought doesn't make you retch. It should have.), he presses you into your mattress. Covers you with his own body. Envelopes you within the crease of his skin so you can't escape (you don't want to)._

Really you should have been expecting this. Because isn't this how it always goes?

You attract menace- you create emergency; you and your masked crusaders. Danger is drawn to you, a flower growing towards light (this metaphor particularly rings true with you. Sometimes, you wonder if the Earth would be better without superheroes. Because heroes _breed_villains. Villains like him. Villains you take into your bed.)

All of this considered, you really shouldn't have been surprised upon the ambush. Doctor Doom's inanely predictable robots crowding around you and a few hundred startled civilians.

"This is going to be a PR nightmare." One of the team mutters viciously (let's be honest, it's probably Fury) down the group line.

And then the panic sets in.

Now, the attack you can handle. You take bone rattling bombs and savage gunfire in your stride. You brush scrapes with death from your shoulders as if they're nothing. But the mass hysteria, well, that's different.

One distressed citizen in your path, blubbing and pleading for help and you just-

- freeze.

Sometimes it does well not to remember that beneath all this metal, you're just like them (oh and doesn't Loki just know it- doesn't he just love it).

Luckily, today (and always it seems) the good Captain is the city's soothing voice of reason- of calm as he instructs screaming civilians to get inside, to not panic. "We have control," he calls out in placid, humble tones.

_I have control_, you think. But for the first time since you became an Avenger, you're not sure you do.

_No one ever taught you about sex. Sex has always been callous and messy, careless and detached. Sex is not this. Not Loki moving within you slowly- slowly, rocking you to your grave. Not arms wrapped around you, stroking you to life. Not lips at your ear, whispering in a language you don't understand but sounds like a lullaby. Not your breath being stolen from your lungs and replaced with his. Not this- not this._

"Is that all you've got Victor?" You half-scream half-laugh at your adversary (trying not to think about just how deranged you sound).

He's striking you with bursts of electricity, staccato impulses that, for precious fleeting seconds, allow you to forget what you are and what you've done. And maybe- maybe if you just push him a little more then he'll return harder, oppose you with more force and make you forget for longer, help you wipe your mind, grant you blissful ignorance.

Yes, you think when Doom's force becomes too much for you too overpower, _yes_-

You're on your back by the time a jolly green ally tackles Doom away from you.

Air crackles around you, hot and charged, and your suit fizzles with all the electricity it has tried to absorb saving your life.

Immediately, when your mental faculties return to relative normalcy, your hand flutters over your chest plate, where the arc reactor hides beneath.

Your Palladium heart.

He seemed to be drawn to it, last night, attracted to your exposed life force. Fingers prying at the edges, basking in the blue glow. He could have ripped it from your chest at any moment, in a second he could have-

He didn't.

_Those sounds that fill the air, like bitter music, can't be of your own making (but they are). Those gasps and sighs can't be from your own lips (but they are). Loki can't be doing this to you (but he is. Your shameful rapture)._

"Tony, friend, are you harmed?" Thor booms, standing over you and casting you in his shadow (much like another, you can't help but think).

"I'm fine big fella. Don't worry." Your answer comes through bared teeth before you accept the offer of his hand to pull you to your feet.

When you're chest to chest with the god you see a peculiar look flit across his face. It could easily be concern but right then you are convinced it is something more.

Something suspicious. Like he _knows_. Knows that little brother fucked you into submission not a day ago.

But you're wearing your suit so how could he possibly? This paranoia (this _guilt_, you reluctantly acknowledge) doesn't suit you. It scratches at the inside of your skull and demands your attention.

You push Thor away and ignore that face like a wounded animal he dons at your rejection.

You think he'd look different if he knew what you'd done with his brother.

_You can't be sure how long it lasts, this ebb and flow as your bodies move (together. You move together rather than against one another. Wrong. It's wrong). But it ends eventually with the waves of him crashing down on your shore (and God you hadn't meant to cry out like that, to scream like that. You pray that his name didn't pass your lips when you came because you know you had felt it lying in wait, sitting heavily on your tongue. Loki). And when you're both spent you curl in on yourself, sweat slicked and sticky and sorely lacking in any kind of grace. You don't care; you want to crawl out of your skin (and into his)._

You thud onto the roof of Stark Tower, can't get out of your suit fast enough, and growl at JARVIS when he tells you Fury is calling and he's "not happy".

"Tell him I'm injured. Not seriously, but I'll be incapacitated for a day or two."

"And if he doesn't believe me, sir?"

"Then tell him to fuck off."

"Yes sir." JARVIS says in that polite monotone that to your ears sounds woefully long-suffering (trust you, to create an A.I. that has the capability to feel hard done by).

You need a shower.

You need to wash the scent of him from your skin- the feel of him from inside of you.

But you know that water, however biting, won't work (you don't want it to).

_"Is that it then? Is my life my own again?" You ask in a deadpan. You want to see his face, gouge his reaction (as if you could really tell if he was lying) but the thought of uncurling, of acting like you're whole, well, not even you're that good an actor._

_"It was always your own, Stark." Loki sighs, exasperated, like you've just missed the punchline of some grand joke that he doesn't want repeat._

_"What you gave was of your own doing. Your own free will." He's whispering now, voice harsh and rasping and scratching at your skin, and he curls himself around your body, pressing every one of those lines of bitter poetry against you as if you were carved for no other purpose than to fit against him, "Do you suppose that I could have made you do something you truly did not want to do?"_

_And hasn't he just got you again- tricked you again (look at all these strings that he's got you on, pretty puppet, such a tangle- such a mess. Oh my)._

_You wanted it to feel like being forced. Like being pressured, bound, blackmailed- that your life depended on it._

_But it didn't._

_You gave yourself, your body, freely. You did not question it. You did not falter. You took pleasure in the act._

_And what's worse than giving yourself, than enjoying it-_

_What's worse-_

- is that you want to do it again.

* * *

**A/N: I still have tumblr, if you're interested in my insanity: king-mycroft**

**As for the next chapter... well, we'll see won't we.**

**If you haven't taken note of it by now, I shall point out that Tony is slowly, kind of, deteriorating (Loki has bad intentions, you see. I did say this was not happy. Several times in fact) and it seems to be going in stages. Confusion, Obsession, Self- Doubt/ Guilt so far. **

**I need a next stage to focus on in the next chapter, so if you want to help me out and give me a word (or words) I should focus on that you think would be a next plausible stage to Tony's downfall, then that would be just great. (Audience participation, yay!)**


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